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117 The Second Season: Jivana Ritau
During Jivana Ritau, the rainy season, from mid-August to mid-December, Living with Siva: Hinduism's Contemporary Culture is the primary text. The key word of this season is work. The colors are rust, copper-maroon and all shades of red�rust for earthy preservation, copper-maroon for fulfillment and red for physical energy. The Aadheenam's 60-foot flag pole flies the rust-colored dhvaja, symbolizing environmental care. Copper-maroon and all shades of red adorn our smaller flags.

We are pleased to announce the web release of Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami's monumental work on Hindu culture and lifestyle:
Living with Siva.
Click here for the entire text and artwork, now on-line!

This is the season of honoring and showing appreciation for those in the vanaprastha ashrama, life's elder advisor stage. The focus is on preserving what has been created, manifesting goals and fulfilling plans made in the past. Inwardly the emphasis is on direct cognition and caring for the practical details of the external world. Practicality is a word much used this season.

Bodhinatha's Sun One Video. Most Recent update: July 30, 2003.

Bodhinatha speaks on Japa, Mantra Repetition, niyama # 9, elucidating the many dimensions of the sacred science of mantrams, chanting a holy syllable, word or sentence again and again.

Japa may be done silently or aloud. Sometimes it is best to begin aloud, so the mind is more focused, then slowly let it become internalized as concentration improves. Often japa is done right after attending a puja. Japa is not used to acquire worldly things. Instead, prayers are used for that. People who anger should not practice japa.

The simplest japa is A-U-M. This is the primary sound of the universe. Initiation is important before starting the practice of japa yoga. Once initiated it is essential to continue the practice, to strive consistently and to chant as instructed by the guru.

14 minutes, 2 seconds

No Audio Today

				Live Web Cam Pix!

[caption for photo on left: Dr. Tom Yarema who helps with the health care of the monks with his wife who is expecting any day now! and his mother and father.]

Jivana Ritau, continued:

In the monasteries and the missions, there is a big push on studying the sutras of Living with Siva and these Saiva Dharma Shastras. The format of the mission satsanga changes into one that in fact helps everyone live and breathe with Lord Siva through personal adjustment to the aphorisms of Living with Siva, which define tradition, culture and protocol. Gurukulams are established or renewed to teach the 64 kalas for boys and girls. All work hard to perfect and strengthen Saivite culture in the life of each member. Kulamatas, grihinis and their daughters should think ahead and make plans to send talented children to dancing, singing and art schools for special courses, and ponder ways to make this possible through scholarships and special funds.

It is a time of building and repairing and caring for what has been built, planted or created in any realm of life. It is a physical time, of exercise and exertion in the Bhuloka, a magnetic time for action and willpower, of finishing all jobs started since the first ritau. On the farm, there is harvesting of the land's fruits as we celebrate abundance. In the missions during Jivana Ritau, the shishyas can form tirukuttams, and thereby visit students' homes, see how they live and meet their families.

Speaking of culture. Here is one of S. Rajam's beautiful paintings that will appear in Dancing with Siva. A young woman contemplates the perfection and beauty of the universe.

Today the monks were focused as usual. Preparations are in the works for Bodhinatha's two weeks of travel. Click here to go to his travel page. More details will be released shortly. The Pilliyar kulam has been focused on getting all the details complete for the international distribution of the next issue of Hinduism Today which will go to press in Kansas City this week. The Ganapati Kulam has been working on various projects, children's courses, the new book called "Yoga's Forgotten Foundations." and the new edition of the Island Temple magazine, the story of the Iraivan Temple project which will be printed in October. The Siddhidata Kulam carries on with the logistical support behind the Iraivan Temple construction project, our beautiful vegetable garden and all the grounds. The Lambodara Kulam is busy with Iraivan fund raising, guests and temple pujas and the Ekadanta Kulam works on the coming Innersearch and all the coordination details for Bodhinatha's programs in California, Mauritius and Malaysia. When Niraj was here on Task Force, he remarked in his closing talk during his last lunch that "its seems unbelievable that there are only 20 of you and you do all this!" We can only say, it is all Gurudeva's grace and the grace of the Gods and Devas who set up everything in such a marvelous system of balance between seva and sadhana, service and spiritual work. Consistency is the key...

Also, though we have no pictures for you we had lots of guests today, some from Bangalore and California.

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Bhutas carved into the lower courses of the temple sanctum, depicting the joyful spirits of the earth and the stones that support the temple above.

Ornaments of Iraivan.

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Date: June_01_2003
Title: Rebuilding Self-Confidence through Affirmation
Category: Self Improvement
Duration: 5 min., 60 seconds
Date Given: March 04, 2003
Given by: Bodhinatha

Good Morning, everyone! Happy to have a few new guests with us this morning. Welcome to you, and lots of pilgrims from last week. Our talk this morning is primarily on 'Affirmations'.

It came up during a recent talk to a gathering. A gathering of Billy Tate's group. She brings her group here once a year, it is a metaphysical group. A lot of them have been studying 'Merging with Siva', now for two or three years and they come back.

We were explaining Hinduism in our non-technical way, no sanskrit words were allowed, trying to explain it in concepts everyone could understand, since lots of them were not familiar with Hindu terminology. We were explaining the spiritual path, the way we did in recent 'Publisher's Desk', that the Hindu view of the spiritual path can be said simply, "to becoming a better person, improving our behavior, learning from our mistakes."

So, we were talking like that and the idea of self-concept came up. We were talking about the power of affirmation and how that can be used to improve our self-concept.

I realized we had not talked about that for a while. So, I started to think about it and that catalyzed me to pull out my 'Merging with Siva' and look through the wonderful chapter on 'The Power of Affirmation'. It is in there and I will share some of that this morning.

It is very interesting. If we go through a major illness and our physical body gets weak, we finish the illness and we come out of it, with weak muscles. We are feeling very weak. But everyone knows, we can solve that problem by exercise. We can build back our muscle strength. All we have to do is exercise consistently, right? That is a well-understood fact. Then, we get our normal strength back again, everything is okay and the effect that the illness had on our physical body is erased. Just like it didn't happen. We have all been through that personally, I am sure, and seen others who go through it and this is just common understanding.

However, if we have difficult experiences in life, if things don't go well, difficult times, stress, failure in one degree or another, it impacts us mentally in a similar way. We become discouraged, we begin to think, "I can't", rather than, "I can," because of the experiences of life.

What do we do?

Many people would say, "Well, we can't change that. That is what happened to us. We can change our physical body. We can build back our muscles when we are sick. But, when we lose our self-confidence, because of what we experienced in life, there is nothing we can do. It is gone."

Of course, that is where the power of affirmation comes in. Just like exercise is the best tool to build back muscle strength after a serious illness, after experiencing serious difficulties in life, the use of affirmations is the best tool to build back our self-confidence. Despite the fact that most people might not think of that, that it is not as well understood as exercise is to muscles, it is the tool, a wonderful tool, that Gurudeva has given us for building back our self-confidence. Changing the I-can't feeling into I-can, which is the same as saying, "I can't lift 10 pounds anymore." to "I can lift 10 pounds, I can lift 20 pounds, through exercise."

We can do the same thing to our mental well being through the power of affirmation.

What is an affirmation?

An affirmation is a series of positive words repeated time and time again, in line with a visual concept. Such a statement can be repeated mentally or preferably verbally many times a day. The idea is if one feels, 'I can't', he cannot. If he is always criticizing himself and lamenting over what he cannot do, then he can reverse this pattern and change the flow of magnetic mental force and enliven the intensity by saying orally and feeling through all the pores of his body, "I can. I will. I am able to accomplish what I plan."

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MORE UPLIFTING THINGS		2004 Indian Odyssey Join Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami on an 18 day Innersearch to South India, from Jan 19 to Feb 5, as we pilgrimage to ancient monasteries, magnificent 1,000 plus year old sacred temples and meet with India's holy men in a life-transforming adventure. Click on the above link for more details.
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